[PATCH - resend] VFS: use synchronize_rcu_expedited() in namespace_unlock()

From: NeilBrown
Date: Thu Oct 04 2018 - 21:27:52 EST



The synchronize_rcu() in namespace_unlock() is called every time
a filesystem is unmounted. If a great many filesystems are mounted,
this can cause a noticable slow-down in, for example, system shutdown.

The sequence:
mkdir -p /tmp/Mtest/{0..5000}
time for i in /tmp/Mtest/*; do mount -t tmpfs tmpfs $i ; done
time umount /tmp/Mtest/*

on a 4-cpu VM can report 8 seconds to mount the tmpfs filesystems, and
100 seconds to unmount them.

Boot the same VM with 1 CPU and it takes 18 seconds to mount the
tmpfs filesystems, but only 36 to unmount.

If we change the synchronize_rcu() to synchronize_rcu_expedited()
the umount time on a 4-cpu VM drop to 0.6 seconds

I think this 200-fold speed up is worth the slightly high system
impact of using synchronize_rcu_expedited().

Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> (from general rcu perspective)
Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@xxxxxxxx>
---

I posted this last October, then again last November (cc:ing Linus)
Paul is happy enough with it, but no other response.
I'm hoping it can get applied this time....

Thanks,
NeilBrown


fs/namespace.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namespace.c b/fs/namespace.c
index 99186556f8d3..02e978b22294 100644
--- a/fs/namespace.c
+++ b/fs/namespace.c
@@ -1360,7 +1360,7 @@ static void namespace_unlock(void)
if (likely(hlist_empty(&head)))
return;

- synchronize_rcu();
+ synchronize_rcu_expedited();

group_pin_kill(&head);
}
--
2.14.0.rc0.dirty

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